|

|

The following account may sound melodramatic but it is highly accurate.

None of these are quotes and represent my best recollection.

At apprx 1p, after a witness had finished, cliff arnebeck -- who had given a presentation some time before -- interjected and asked to call one more witness. He was given permission to do so. He said he was calling clint curtis.

Some of the audience literally gasped while others applauded. They clearly knew who he was.

Curtis stood at the front of room with arnebeck seated behind him. Curtis was about five to ten feet from the members of congress. At the front of the room, he placed his hand on a bible and was sworn. To my knowledge, he was the only witness sworn.

Arnebeck began a direct examination of curtis with basic questions, name, residence....

Then got to his qualifications.

Then, he asked curtis something like whether voting machines could be hacked. He said yes. Arnebeck asked him on what he based that opinion. He said because I wrote a program that could do it. Arnebeck asked when that happened. Curtis said feeney had asked him to design such a program at yang enterprises.

Jaws dropped. Tubbs jones and waters looked shocked.

Tubbs jones, waters and nadler asked questions. Waters asked him to repeat who asked him to do it. Congressman feeney, he said. Nadler asked him some questions, as did tubbs jones and a state senator.

Curtis was asked what he would conclude if there was such a substantial deviation btwn exit polls and actual results. He said he would conclude the election had been hacked. Gasps. Could have heard a pin drop.

In the end, curtis was very very convincing to everyone in attendance. He was a show stopper, a stunner. It was a really amazing moment.

Raw Story has a PDF of a statement under penalty of perjury purportedly signed by Curtis on December 6, 2004. It looks like an actual PDF of such a statement, but of course one could easily fake such a document. Curtis could also be lying, but why would he subject himself to a perjury charge? Curtis claims that while working as a computer programmer at Yang Enterprises, Inc. in Oviedo, Florida, he was asked in late September or early October, 2000 by Tom Feeney to create a prototype of a voting program that could alter the vote in an election and be undetectable. Curtis, then a lifelong Republican, believed that Feeney wanted this information so he would be able to detect possible cheating by Democrats. After Curtis had created the prototype, prior to the 2000 election, he was shocked to learn from remarks by his boss that the program would instead be used to commit vote fraud. Curtis was shocked, and resigned from the company shortly thereafter. Curtis has more allegations regarding discussions he has had with various law enforcement officials about his former company.

Who is this Tom Feeney who reportedly asked Curtis to create the voting fraud software? Feeney's official biography indicates that he is a U.S. Congressman from Florida, elected in 2002. At the time Curtis claims to have met with him, he was a long-time member of the Florida House of Representatives. He became Speaker of the House in November, 2001. Feeney was also Jeb Bush's running mate when Bush unsuccessfully ran for governor of Florida in 1994.

As I say, this may all be a load of B.S. Even if that turns out to be the case, this sort of story at a minimum shows the need for voting machines that leave paper trails. We need a transparent voting system that produces verifiable results.

UPDATE: Wired News has more.

|

|

|

It has been a sad few weeks.

The situation seems to be deteriorating daily. To brief you on a few things: Electricity is lousy. Many areas are on the damned 2 hours by 4 hours schedule and there are other areas that are completely in the dark- like A'adhamiya. The problem is that we're not getting much generator electricity because fuel has become such a big problem. People have to wait in line overnight now to fill up the car. It's a mystery. It really is. There was never such a gasoline crisis as the one we're facing now. We're an oil country and yet there isn't enough gasoline to go around. . . .

. . . .

I took my turn at 'gasoline duty' a couple of weeks ago. E. and my cousin were going to go wait for gasoline so I decided I'd join them and keep them company. We left the house at around 5 a.m. and it was dark and extremely cold. I thought for sure we'd be the first at the station but I discovered the line was about a kilometer long with dozens and dozens of cars lined up around the block. My heart sank at the discouraging sight but E. and the cousin looked optimistic, "We just might be able to fill up before evening this time!" E. smiled.

. . . .

All in all, it took E. and the cousin 13 hours to fill the car. . . .

People are wondering how America and gang (i.e. Iyad Allawi, etc.) are going to implement democracy in all of this chaos when they can't seem to get the gasoline flowing in a country that virtually swims in oil. There's a rumor that this gasoline crisis has been concocted on purpose in order to keep a minimum of cars on the streets. Others claim that this whole situation is a form of collective punishment because things are really out of control in so many areas in Baghdad- especially the suburbs. The third theory is that this being done purposely so that the Iraq government can amazingly bring the electricity, gasoline, kerosene and cooking gas back in January before the elections and make themselves look like heroes.

We're also watching the election lists closely. Most people I've talked to aren't going to go to elections. It's simply too dangerous and there's a sense that nothing is going to be achieved anyway. The lists are more or less composed of people affiliated with the very same political parties whose leaders rode in on American tanks. Then you have a handful of tribal sheikhs. Yes- tribal sheikhs. Our country is going to be led by members of religious parties and tribal sheikhs- can anyone say Afghanistan? What's even more irritating is that election lists have to be checked and confirmed by none other than Sistani!! Sistani- the Iranian religious cleric. So basically, this war helped us make a transition from a secular country being run by a dictator to a chaotic country being run by a group of religious clerics. Now, can anyone say 'theocracy in sheep’s clothing'?

. . . .

The assault on Falloojeh and other areas is continuing. There are rumors of awful weapons being used in Falloojeh. The city has literally been burnt and bombed to the ground. Many of the people displaced from the city are asking to be let back in, in spite of everything. I can't even begin to imagine how difficult it must be for the refugees. It's like we've turned into another Palestine- occupation, bombings, refugees, death. Sometimes I'll be watching the news and the volume will be really low. The scene will be of a man, woman or child, wailing in front of the camera; crying at the fate of a body lying bloodily, stiffly on the ground- a demolished building in the background and it will take me a few moments to decide the location of this tragedy- Falloojeh? Gaza? Baghdad? [link via BuzzFlash; typo corrected by me]

Remind me again why we started this war? I get sick every time I think about it. I also am sick of the "Support Our Troops" ribbons that really mean "Support the War." And of course all the flags. People think that if you wave a flag around, anything is permissible, even laudable. If John Wayne Gacy had just bedecked his crawlspace with flags, he would never have been prosecuted. I'm with Howard Zinn:  "There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."

|

|

WAR IS PEACE

 

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

 

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

WAR IS PEACE

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace. 

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

• allows the FBI to force anyone (such as doctors, libraries, universities and Internet service providers) to turn over records on their clients and customers, and makes it a crime for that person to disclose the search to anyone;
• allows the government to conduct "sneak and peek" searches of homes and businesses without notifying the subjects;
• allows the FBI to secretly conduct physical searches and wiretaps on American citizens without satisfying the Fourth Amendment's "probable cause" standard; and
• puts the CIA back in the business of spying on Americans, a power it notoriously abused in the 1960's and 1970's, when it engaged in widespread spying on protest groups and other Americans.

The Bush administration also sought to institute the Orwellian "Total Information Awareness" program (later rechristened "Terrorist Information Awareness") to combine data from hundreds of government and commercial databases in order to create a dossier on every American. The amazingly creepy logo for this program featured an eye atop a pyramid overseeing the whole world.

The Bush administration also treats dissent as something akin to treason. (Its supporters have joined in. Recall, for example, the furor when Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks had the temerity to say that she was ashamed that Bush was from Texas.) Here is how Bush has treated detractors who have showed up at his appearances:

A favorite tactic of the Bush administration has been to herd protesters at presidential appearances into "designated protest zones," out of sight of his motorcade, and to arrest people who refuse to be moved. The policy, applied only to those with dissenting views, has been used to suppress dissent nationwide, and ACLU lawyers around the country are working to get charges dropped against people arrested for nothing more than wanting to voice their opinion during a presidential visit.

. . . .

The ACLU of Eastern Missouri is considering legal action in several St. Louis cases:

* During a Nov. 4, 2002 Bush visit, activists Bill Ramsey and Angela Gordon were arrested after refusing to move to a gravel parking lot a quarter-mile away from the president's entourage.

* On Jan. 22, 2003, Andrew Wimmer was arrested for refusing to take his "Instead of war, invest in people" sign to a designated protest zone more than three blocks away and down an embankment; however, a woman with a "Mr. President, we love you" sign was allowed to remain. Police also barred reporters from entering the protest zone to interview dissenters.

* When Bush visited the local Boeing plant on April 16, 2003, authorities attempted to herd protesters into a designated protest zone a quarter-mile away and off the main road, in a field. But the 20-square-foot roped-off area was too small to contain all the protesters - among them, Christine Mains and her 5-year-old daughter. When Mains, standing several hundred feet away with an antiwar sign, refused to move, she and her tearful child were hauled away in separate squad cars. Mains charged that authorities also treated her roughly and set her bond so high she couldn't be released until the ACLU intervened, hours later.

. . . .

SIDELINED IN PITTSBURGH: In Pittsburgh, where people with pro-Bush signs lined the streets for a Labor Day visit in 2002, police moved those "critical" of the president, under what they said were orders from the Secret Service, to a protest zone one-third of a mile away. Among those arrested was William Neel, a 65-year-old retired steelworker with a sign declaring: "The Bushes must love the poor; they've created so many of us." . . . 

ACLU HEAD ARRESTED IN PHOENIX: There had been complaints of police misconduct at demonstrations in Phoenix in the past, so on Sept. 26, 2002, when President Bush attended a dinner there, the head of the ACLU of Arizona went to the protest site as a legal observer - and was herself arrested. The protesters had only just gathered, Executive Director Eleanor Eisenberg said, when suddenly, with no apparent provocation, mounted police and officers in full riot gear charged into the crowd. She was across the street taking pictures of them beating a young man when she was arrested. Eisenberg spent nine hours in custody, most of it incommunicado. She was "bruised and shaken, sore from being in handcuffs for more than an hour with my hands behind my back in a police car. It was a horrible experience," she said afterwards. The only charge against her, resisting arrest, was dropped four months later.

TROUBLE SIGNS IN TAMPA: The ACLU of Florida also sued the city of Tampa in 2002 for wrongful arrest of two Florida grandmothers and a gay activist during a 2001 rally for President Bush and his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. "We weren't exactly 20-year-old rabble rousers," said Jan Lentz, who was forcibly hauled away in handcuffs with her two companions for refusing to ditch her "Investigate Florida Votergate" sign demanding an investigation of Florida's 2000 election fiasco. They were accused of trespassing even though all three had tickets to the rally.

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

This slogan is perhaps the dearest to Bush's heart. As many, including Franklin Foer, Neal Gabler, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., have documented, Bush has no interest in science. Indeed, he has contempt for it. For instance, he dismissed a report from the National Academy of Sciences about the relationship beween greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change, and the potentially catastrophic consequences for humanity, as "the report from the bureaucracy." Bush already knows the truth, and doesn't let anything contradicting it get in the way of his administration's policies.

Jacob Weisberg explains Bush's proud embrace of ignorance:

Bush may not have been born stupid, but he has achieved stupidity, and now he wears it as a badge of honor. What makes mocking this president fair as well as funny is that Bush is, or at least once was, capable of learning, reading, and thinking. We know he has discipline and can work hard (at least when the goal is reducing his time for a three-mile run). Instead he chose to coast, for most of his life, on name, charm, good looks, and the easy access to capital afforded by family connections.

The most obvious expression of Bush's choice of ignorance is that, at the age of 57, he knows nothing about policy or history. After years of working as his dad's spear-chucker in Washington, he didn't understand the difference between Medicare and Medicaid, the second- and third-largest federal programs. Well into his plans for invading Iraq, Bush still couldn't get down the distinction between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, the key religious divide in a country he was about to occupy. Though he sometimes carries books for show, he either does not read them or doesn't absorb anything from them. Bush's ignorance is so transparent that many of his intimates do not bother to dispute it even in public. Consider the testimony of several who know him well.

Richard Perle, foreign policy adviser: "The first time I met Bush 43 … two things became clear. One, he didn't know very much. The other was that he had the confidence to ask questions that revealed he didn't know very much."

David Frum, former speechwriter: "Bush had a poor memory for facts and figures. … Fire a question at him about the specifics of his administration's policies, and he often appeared uncertain. Nobody would ever enroll him in a quiz show."

Laura Bush, spouse: "George is not an overly introspective person. He has good instincts, and he goes with them. He doesn't need to evaluate and reevaluate a decision. He doesn't try to overthink. He likes action."

Paul O'Neill, former treasury secretary: "The only way I can describe it is that, well, the President is like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection."

A second, more damning aspect of Bush's mind-set is that he doesn't want to know anything in detail, however important. Since college, he has spilled with contempt for knowledge, equating learning with snobbery and making a joke of his own anti-intellectualism. ("[William F. Buckley] wrote a book at Yale; I read one," he quipped at a black-tie event.) By O'Neill's account, Bush could sit through an hourlong presentation about the state of the economy without asking a single question. ("I was bored as hell," the president shot back, ostensibly in jest.)

Closely related to this aggressive ignorance is a third feature of Bush's mentality: laziness. Again, this is a lifelong trait. Bush's college grades were mostly Cs (including a 73 in Introduction to the American Political System). At the start of one term, the star of the Yale football team spotted him in the back row during the shopping period for courses. "Hey! George Bush is in this class!" Calvin Hill shouted to his teammates. "This is the one for us!" As governor of Texas, Bush would take a long break in the middle of his short workday for a run followed by a stretch of video golf or computer solitaire.

A fourth and final quality of Bush's mind is that it does not think. The president can't tolerate debate about issues. Offered an option, he makes up his mind quickly and never reconsiders. At an elementary school, a child once asked him whether it was hard to make decisions as president. "Most of the decisions come pretty easily for me, to be frank with you." By leaping to conclusions based on what he "believes," Bush avoids contemplating even the most obvious basic contradictions: between his policy of tax cuts and reducing the deficit; between his call for a humble foreign policy based on alliances and his unilateral assertion of American power; between his support for in-vitro fertilization (which destroys embryos) and his opposition to fetal stem-cell research (because it destroys embryos).

Orwell was a little off on the date, but his chilling vision of the future has been largely realized by the Bush regime. And Dubya's got more than four years to go.

|

|

|

|

I'll give this to Republicans. They know the America they want. They want a government so small that, in the words of one prominent Republican, it can be drowned in a bathtub.

They want a government that runs big deficits, but is small enough to fit into your bedroom.
They want a government that is of, by, and for their special interest friends.

They want a government that preaches compassion but practices division.

They want wealth rewarded over work.

And they are willing to use any means to get there.

In going from record surpluses to record deficits, the Republican Party has relinquished the mantle of fiscal responsibility.

And now they're talking about borrowing another $2 trillion to take benefits away from our Senior Citizens.

In going from record job creation to record job loss, they have abandoned the mantle of economic responsibility.

In cutting health care, education, and community policing programs... and in failing to invest in America's inner cities, or distressed rural communities... they certainly have no desire to even claim the mantle of social responsibility.

In their refusal to embrace real electoral reform or conduct the business in government in the light of day, they are hardly the model of civic responsibility.

In their willingness to change the rules so that their indicted leaders can stay in power, they have even given up any claim on personal responsibility.

And in starting an international conflict based on misleading information, I believe they have abdicated America's moral responsibility, as well.

There is a Party of fiscal responsibility... economic responsibility.... social responsibility... civic responsibility... personal responsibility... and moral responsibility.

It's the Democratic Party. [link via Daily Kos]

Read the whole thing. We need this man as head of the DNC. Democrats need to articulate -- proudly -- what we stand for. Dean can help us do it. On the same general subject, see Eric Zorn's Why I'm Proud to Be a Liberal.

|

According to a written explanation from CBS, the United Church of Christ is being denied network access because its ad implies acceptance of gay and lesbian couples -- among other minority constituencies -- and is, therefore, too "controversial."

"Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups by other individuals and organizations," reads an explanation from CBS, "and the fact the Executive Branch has recently proposed a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast on the [CBS and UPN] networks."

Similarly, a rejection by NBC declared the spot "too controversial."

Mind you, although the UCC calls its ad "edgy," it doesn't even mention homosexuality, let alone (gasp!) gay marriage. Nor does it name any other "individuals and organizations"  that exclude "gay couples and other minority groups." And the notion that Bush, by proposing a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage (which, by the way, was resoundingly defeated in Congress), can remove subjects from public discussion is appalling. (link via Talking Points Memo)

|